Honorable Mention "Home Decorating Store"		Color Hints Shining Through Translucent, see-through colors are big these days, milky greens and frosted blues showing up on everything from desk accessories to kitchen appliances. How do you achieve that luminous color effect on a larger scale? Simple. Pick a lighter shade of your chosen green or blue as a base coat to paint on the wall. Then glaze over it with a slightly darker shade, mixed with Benjamin Moore's® Glazing Liquid-for a more translucent look, use more glazing liquid; for a more opaque effect, use less. Dab or blot off the excess with cheesecloth or sponges. The light undercoat showing through creates a luminous, glowing effect that's appealing and contemporary. Compare and Contrast You have a big house on a small lot, and it looks, frankly, a little crowded. One idea is to paint it a dark color, to reduce its proportions-the eye sees dark colors as receding into the background. However: all the other houses on your street are white, light and bright. How to avoid sticking out like a rain cloud in a blue sky? Choose a midtone color-a stone beige rather than a chocolate brown--and the contrast with surrounding houses will make it seem darker, achieving the desired effect without looking too gloomy. Details, Details People often choose a trim color for bedroom, kitchen, or bath, and then buy accessories to match. For a more personal look, try reversing this process. Look around at some favorite objects: an antique quilt, a ceramic bowl, vintage kitchen linens or a prized poster. Take your inspiration from the colors you see, repeating a dominant shade as an accent on windows, doors or trim. Remember, you can always bring the object right into our store for an exact color match. Pause and Reflect You thought you had painted the family room a soft linen white, but when you hang up your brushes it suddenly looks lime green or petal pink. What's going on? Before you head back to the paint store for a refund, check out your carpet and couch. A red carpet will reflect onto white walls, creating a pink glow; same goes for a dark green couch, or any other large area of intense color. The effect will be accentuated in different kinds of light-daylight, incandescent light or fluorescent light will alter the reflective properties of the wall and reduce or increase the glow. Feeling Blue Ask most Americans to name their favorite color, and they'll answer blue. But blue can be a tricky color to use on a house exterior. Primary shades look cheap and "fast-foody", while pale shades can look like a baby shower or an after-dinner mint. The most successful blues are the grayed- down slate and greenish shades so common in New England-these gray-green, low-value blues look pretty in the gray Northeast light, weather well and resist fading. Cleaner Colors Why are dark countertops and appliances hard to keep clean? Dark surfaces have poor reflective properties, absorbing more light than they reflect. Result: spills and smears show up easily. White, sand or stone colors in a matte finish are almost always a better choice in the kitchen, if you don't want to be a slave to the sponge. Keep this in mind as well when considering the stylish stainless steel appliances now on the market: fingerprints, smudges and swipes of the cleaning rag all show up in detail against the shiny finish. Brownie Points Brown is the color of hearth and home to many minds, the color of baking bread and roasting turkey. It's such a mouth-watering color, in fact, that manufacturers often add brown coloring to foods to make them more appetizing to consumers. If food doesn't look brown (a gray micro-waved burger, for example) people don't want to eat it, despite its taste or smell. Keep this in mind when creating a cozy dining area; shades of brown get everyone in the mood for dinner. Invisible Interiors Everyone wants their furniture, walls and drapes to "match." But remember: if all your furnishings match too closely, they end up canceling each other out. Furniture and drapes that blend right into the walls become invisible, rather than adding design interest to a room. To highlight furnishings, instead, try to play light colors against dark, since light colors will seem to move toward the eye, and dark colors will recede into the background. A handsome armchair upholstered in a light fabric, for example, will look spectacular against slightly darker walls, while light drapes will leap out against darker or wooden trim. Seeing Spots Remember this old party trick? Focus hard for 10 seconds on a small red spot. Now quickly raise your eyes to a plain white wall, and an after-image-a pale green spot-will appear. What's going on? Staring at the red spot tires the part of the retina that is red-sensitive. The eye naturally shifts to the complementary color, green. Called an after-image, these color ghosts are not limited to red. The after-image for yellow is violet, for example, and blue will appear after staring at orange. Color Blind or Color Confused? Even the color blind can see color-they just can't always tell the colors apart. In the most common kind of common blindness (called protanope), people confuse red and orange with yellow and green. A second kind (called deuteranope) causes the same symptoms, but also leaves people unable to distinguish gray from purple. The third, and final kind (tritanope), causes people to confuse green with blue, and gray with yellow and/or violet. Color by Numbers If colors could talk, they'd call it a population explosion. In 1948, a homeowner looking to paint the breakfast nook could take his pick from among the 180 colors Benjamin Moore & Co. then offered. By 1953, the choices had widened to 200. Only six years later, paint buyers could wallow in 2,000 color possibilities, from Bubblegum Pink to Willow Green (a 1959 favorite). And today? The choice is almost infinite-1,400 colors from a library of 14,000, and the ability to create almost any color on demand. Window Wizardry New house. Lots of lovely windows. How to create window treatments for them all? Here's an attractive, affordable, and durable idea. Hang ready-made blinds or shades. In place of a valance, buy a plain, pre-cut wood cornice, perhaps with a simple molding detail. Sponge, stipple, glaze, or stencil on a design, install above the window, and admire. You have a unique, decorative, easy-to-clean window treatment. Best of all, changing colors is as easy as a fresh coat of paint. Erasing Veins A quick tip from the decorative finish experts: the easiest way to create rich, textured, marble-like veins on a wall is to literally erase them. Apply a coat of glaze (Benjamin Moore Glazing Liquid® mixed with paint) over a dry base coat with a roller. Then blot with cheese cloth, sea sponge or rags for a variety of different finishes. Marble-like veins can be enhanced by dragging a Pink Pearl Eraser® in a twisting motion through the glaze coat while still damp. One suggestion: practice first on a piece of poster board before attacking the living room. Best Value It's the most common question a color expert hears: which colors "go" together? Here's a simple, slightly different answer: before pulling out the old color wheel, look at the value or lightness/darkness of the colors. Almost all colors of similar value can go together and look unified. Clear, light colors will look right with other clear, light colors (all of high "value") while gray colors will meld well with other gray colors (all of low "value"). Furnishing the Floor Interested in creating a whimsical, faux finish on the floor? Look for an area with very little furniture, such as a porch, sunroom or hallway. First of all, your handiwork will be better appreciated when it's not obscured by furnishings. And secondly, your design-whether a trompe l'oeil area rug, a twining floral border, or some other personal creation-will hold up better minus the dragging chair legs, rolling TV carts, etc. Resource: Benjamin Moore Whitman Wallpaper and Paint Co., Inc. 242 Bedford St. Whitman, MA 02382 Phone: 781-447-4469 ~ Fax: 781-447-4516 2010 Copyright Whitman Wallpaper and Paint Co., Inc.